guttervomit

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Adobe CS3 Coming in 2006?

18 Mar 2006

From ThinkSecret:

Adobe is working hard to release Creative Suite 3 before the end of
year, sources have recently disclosed. While internal documents
originally pointed to a release date in the first-half of 2007, Adobe
is making a big push—and receiving significant help from Apple—to get
the software package into customer hands this year. For Mac users,
Creative Suite 3’s most notable feature will surely be native support
for Apple’s new Intel-based systems.

Given that Adobe has been pretty religious with its 18-month product cycles, the end of 2006 should be right about the time you would expect CS3 to manifest itself. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more than a little pressure from Apple to pick up the pace with this Macbook-friendly edition of Adobe’s software line, as most benchmarks have shown that the new Macbook is severely underpowered when it comes to Photoshop-related tasks. For early adopters of Apple’s new Intel-powered laptops, this is definitely good news, as it means they’ll be that much closer to actually being able to take advantage of all that horsepower in a more professional setting.

Posted in Software | No Comments »
4

The Jack Bauer/James Bond Dichotomy

17 Mar 2006

Speaking of media dichotomies, I’ve had this pet theory recently that Jack Bauer, in the ever-popular 24 TV series, is the closest thing this particular generation has to a “real” James Bond. Not that I think Pierce Brosnan or the upcoming Daniel Craig aren’t “real” James Bonds, but I have to admit, there’s something a bit anachronistic about the current batch of 007 films.

Let me explain:

The fact is, the effectivity of a “hero” is all in the context, which is why Bond was such an effective hero back in the 60’s and Bauer is such an effective hero today. Back then, being suave and debonnaire and civilized (while still being a real bad-ass) was the way to grab an audience’s attention. This technique still largely works today, but our working definition of “being a bad-ass” has evolved somewhat. In the 60’s, any guy who could instantly seduce any woman he met, whether friend or foe, was a bad-ass. These days, well … you gotta shoot a whole lot of people to get that kind of rep.

Being a mainstream hero then, is half about breaking the rules while doing what is (relative to the hero) “right”, and doing it with style.

In the current season of 24 (now on its 14th hour), Jack Bauer has assaulted the president’s chief advisor, shot the wife of a suspect to try to get him to talk, disabled a fellow CTU agent, and asked the acting head of CTU to kill himself in the interest of the greater good. Oh, and he shot down a helicopter with a handgun at one point as well.

Where James Bond is upper-class, Jack Bauer is working-class, just an average joe trying to save the world. And where James Bond has high-tech gadgets coming out of his ears, Jack Bauer has a drug-habit and a major chip on his shoulder.

Part of the reason why the 007 films don’t grab me (or, I believe, the majority of its target audience) quite as much as an episode or two of 24, is that they are — and this is the ironic part — too faithful to the classical installments. Bond is still a wry-looking, arrogant misogynist with a billion-dollar equipment budget, in an era when those characteristics aren’t necessarily the unique-selling-points that they used to be. These days we’re looking for extreme heroes, who are either perpetually bloodied and battered or unnaturally coiffed, who aren’t afraid to break as many rules as it takes to get the job done, and most importantly, looks really, really mean.

If you haven’t caught 24’s 5th season yet, you’ve still got about 11 hours to go. No corsages necessary.

Posted in Movies, TV | 4 Comments »
6

A Letter to Alan Moore

15 Mar 2006

Dear Mr. Alan Moore,

I assume that by now you have been forced into watching V for Vendetta, the newest movie that pilfers your classic comics.

I don’t think I can imagine just how bad you feel about all the shitty movies that have been supposedly based on your works, but let me just say that no real fan of yours will ever, ever think any of these shoddy "re-envisionings" will ever measure up to the majesty of your vision. Although V for Vendetta was, all things considered, the least shitty of the current crop (From Hell was a platitudinous wreck, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a Hollywoodized yawner and Constantine was like a bad joke), it’s still light-years away from capturing the width and breadth of your original epic.

Look on the bright side though: all of Vendetta the movie’s good bits — V’s intro monologue, V’s visit with Dr. Delia, Evey reading Valerie’s letter — are lifted word-for-word from the original comics. All the bad stuff, meanwhile, can be pretty much blamed on the Wachowski’s Cliffnotes-esque script and McTeigue’s lackluster directing. (And what’s with that lame-ass Matrix fight at the end, anyway?)

Although I do hope that one day, your work will be given a proper movie translation, I’m largely realistic. I wouldn’t mind terribly if you had your name excised from the upcoming Watchmen’s credits as well, if it comes to that. Film is a trivial, crowd-pleasing kind of medium anyway, and hardly worthy of the epics that you’ve written over the years.

Thank you for all the great stories, and let’s just try to forget that any of these terrible movies were ever made.

Your number one fan,

:luis

Posted in Movies | 6 Comments »
40

House vs. Grey’s Anatomy

13 Mar 2006

I was musing today about dichotomies in entertainment, and how there are almost always two vastly different sides to anything. My working example is the TV medical-drama genre, although I’m sure more dedicated couch potatoes could name tons more. (If this were a post about movies, I’d be talking about Volcano/Dante’s Peak or Armageddon/Deep Impact instead.)

But I basically chose the TV medical-drama because I happen to be watching quite a bit of them these past couple of months, in the form of the current dichotomy of House and Grey’s Anatomy. (In the mid to late 90’s, the relevant titles would be E.R. and Chicago Hope.)

House, as you may or may not know, is about a crusty but benign doctor played by Hugh Laurie who solves medical mysteries with as little contact with his patients as possible. Our Sherlock Holmes leads a team composed of a sentimental but damaged female, a self-obsessed rich kid, and a black dude with a chip on his shoulder. His only friend is a kind but conflicted doctor played by Robert Sean Leonard.

In Grey’s Anatomy, meanwhile, our main character is a brassy but confused surgical intern played by Ellen Pompeo, who falls in love with her charming but (it turns out) married boss and gets into all sorts of odd but forgivable scrapes. Her fellow interns include a sentimental but damaged female, a self-obsessed frat-boy, a well-meaning but clumsy dork and a tough but lonely korean girl. They’re supervised by a black lady with a chip on her shoulder.

As you can probably tell, similarities abound between these two shows. On the other hand, the crusty but benign male character (or brassy but confused female) appears in nearly every successful TV series, so it’s not just each other they’re similar to, but the whole industry.

Of course, it’s their differences that I really wanted to write about here, so let’s talk about those.

The first thing you’ll probably notice about Grey’s is the voiceover narration, which is a standard amongst most modern female-centric series. (I believe the thinking is that women are complicated creatures, and without a thoughtful voiceover, it’d be too easy to misunderstand an episode’s meaning.) House, on the other hand, is about a relatively simple creature. He’s not happy, so he makes other people not happy as well. No voiceover narration necessary.

But where Grey’s has a helpful amount of VO, House’s value-add is its trademark snappy banter. For comparison’s sake, check out this list of memorable quotes from House, versus this one from Grey’s, two examples of which I will copy-and-paste below:

From House:

Dr. Gregory House:The eyes can mislead, a smile can lie, but the shoes always tell the truth.
Dr. Wilson:They were Prada, which means she has good taste.
Dr. Gregory House:They were not Prada. You wouldn’t know Prada if one stepped on your scrotum.
Dr. Wilson:Okay, well… they were nice, pointy.

From Grey’s:

Dr. Derek Shepherd:It’s not the chase.
Dr. Meredith Grey:What?
Dr. Derek Shepherd:You and me. It is not the thrill of the chase. It’s not a game. It’s? it’s your tiny ineffectual fists. And your hair.
Dr. Meredith Grey:My hair?
Dr. Derek Shepherd:It smells good. And you’re very, very ballsy. It keeps me in line.
Dr. Meredith Grey:I’m still not going out with you.

That right there is essentially where these two shows differ the most. Where House is flippant and glib, Grey’s is warm and irresistibly cuddly.

Don’t get me wrong though. Grey’s is a funny, entertaining show, but at its heart, what it really wants to do is make you cry, and gasp, and say things like “You stupid man! Can’t you see she needs you right now??” House’s premise, meanwhile, is about a drug-addict doctor with no friends and a wife who left him when he became handicapped, and yet makes you laugh every single episode.

It’s not really for me to say which is the better show, although I could make a few sweeping generalizations about which demographic they’ll mostly attract. Since women are more likely to follow any given TV show regularly, and Grey’s is generally more targeted toward females, it’s also not difficult to imagine which show has better ratings. (It’s fairly close though: Grey’s maintained a viewership of 25.4 million last month, versus House’s 22.2, according to this writeup.)

My personal preference is definitely with Hugh Laurie and his box of snappy comebacks, but I don’t mind sitting out an episode or two of Ellen Pompeo (and, lest we forget, Katherine Heigl) every now and then. It’sMaybe, just maybe, these two shows were conceptualized as polar opposites for the simple reason that, when taken together, they “fill each other out,” so to speak. A wholistic medical-drama experience, if you will. Wonder what kind of demographics you’d get on a show like that.

Posted in TV | 40 Comments »
15

How Guttervomit Got Its Name

11 Mar 2006

It’s a little-known fact that the name of this blog alludes to a particular evening I spent puking my guts out on the sidewalk outside my friend mocca’s house four years ago. I had drunk too much, too fast, and I was paying for it with what looked like everything I ate that week. The blog’s tagline refers to the fact that after you’ve been retching against a coconut tree in the dark for half-an-hour, everything after that can only be brilliant, hopeful and beautiful.

I was reminded of this last night, as I found myself once again puking my guts out after drinking the aforementioned too-much-too-fast-whatever-the-hell-it-was. I did have the good sense to do the requisite barfing into a proper toilet this time around though, which was a significant improvement. After three separate episodes of throat-raping vomit, I decided to call it a night and drove myself home.

This is the first Sunday I’ve been awake at 9am in a long, long time, and it’s great to be alive.

Posted in Randomness | 15 Comments »
0

Interview @ Philweavers

9 Mar 2006

I was interviewed over email by Philweavers founder Jose Illenberger several days ago, and it turns out the interview is already up on their main site. Here’s an excerpt, in which I talk about the 3 community sites I’ve built:

Well, the newest one is Gibbity,which is most easily described as "Friendster for gamers." Essentially,you rate and review a game, and discover which other members hadsimilar opinions regarding that game. It’s only a month old so it’s onthe modest side right now, but the game-review component works prettywell already. This is the one I’m promoting the heck out of, becauseit’s not specific to the Philippine market. (I began writing the"Promoting Your Website" article as a direct result of the stuff Ilearned while plugging Gibbity. So yes, please do visit and join up.)

Another community site which I debuted late last year was oKs.ph,which is a people-powered link-dump like digg.com. PW members can useoKs to plug their projects or link to news that they find interesting;as you can tell from the name, it’s focused pretty directly at thePinoy audience, and it’s free for everyone to use.

My oldest community site, and the one I cut my teeth on, is highfiber.org.Some of you have probably already heard of this site, so I won’t gointo the gory details. Suffice to say that highfiber is a hodgepodge ofeverything I’ve learned over the past 4 years: it’s a group-blog,link-dump, forum, flash arcade, file-sharing hub and all-aroundtime-waster. Highfiber is, btw, the only one of my community siteswhich I consider a "success," because it actually brought peopletogether. The other two have a long way to go before reachingHighfiber’s status, but that’s also partially due to the fact thatthey’re so focused. Highfiber has a very SM kind of appeal, in that ithas something for everyone, as long as you’re not too prudish and keepan open mind.

It’s a pretty long-ish interview so I don’t really expect anyone to read through the whole thing; I do have a snappy quotable quote at the end though, so try to skip down to that if you get bored.

Posted in Randomness | No Comments »
3

GDrive, Box.Net, Streamload and the Online Storage Revolution

7 Mar 2006

Now that it has been more or less confirmed that Google will be buying in to the whole "online storage" revolution, I thought I’d put in my requisite two centavos.

The theory behind online storage is pretty simple. We have lots of data, and we like to move around. We cannot carry around all our data very easily, so keeping it online would be a good solution. That way, we can access it anywhere. That’s the theory anyway.

But there is one other reason online storage is attractive, and it has to do with the transience of media. I’m talking about things like CDs, DVDs and the upcoming HD-DVDs. Storage media shifts roughly every 5-10 years and if you’re looking for a permanent repository for your data, it’s difficult to keep switching to new formats every time something better or larger comes along. This is where online storage solutions really shine, because the media that the data is kept on is absolutely transparent to the user. You don’t have to know or care how they save your stuff, as long as you know it’s safe.

With that in mind, I’ve been trying Streamload for about a month now as a kind of backup drive for various stuff. Streamload is unique in the online-storage arena because it’s the only one offering a rather over-sized 25gbs of storage FOR FREE. If you need more, the next step up is $10/mo, but it does get you a full 250gbs of storage, which is larger than most current hard drives. So now I can grab my stuff from literally any computer on Earth, as long as it has internet access and a reasonable connection speed. Seems like a great solution, right?

Well, almost.

In my mind, there are two things that are stopping Streamload from becoming the killer online-storage solution. The first is that there’s no desktop extension. The only way to upload stuff to Streamload is by using IE or Firefox, and unfortunately, the current file-browser implementation isn’t quite as easy as it could be. The second is that there’s no synchronization tool, which is the real deal-breaker here.

The problem with online storage, you see, is that … well, it’s online, and like it or not, your connection speed is going to severely limit your ability to fully realize its potential. Having a synchronization tool helps the situation greatly because it’d upload your files in the background, while you’re sleeping or while you’re out of the house. Without it, you’d have to remember to upload everything manually, which isn’t just a burden, but is likely going to be impossible if you have a large amount of data.

These two factors combined have forced me to rethink my Streamload strategy, and look elsewhere for a more cost-effective solution. That’s where Box.net comes in. Box.net has pretty much everything you could hope offer in an online storage solution, including little value-adds like an RSS Feed and an open API. Of course, it has a desktop extension and a synchronization tool in there as well. The problem? Well, its free account only offers a measley 1gb of storage, and even its most expensive paid package only offers 15. This basically kills the notion of using this service as a permanent backup, because those 15gbs of storage wouldn’t even be able to handle my comic collection, let alone my music, tv shows or movies.

This is why I have a lot of hope for the upcoming GDrive, because hopefully Google will already have recognized the weaknesses of its various competitors. When Google penetrated the webmail arena two years ago, they did so by offering an unprecedented 1gb of storage, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they broke into the online storage arena by offering unlimited storage to their users. (They would have to, I think, otherwise they would just be inviting competitors to try to one-up them.)

Of course, the question now is, how long do we have to wait for the vaunted GDrive to make its debut.

[ UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Box.net's sync tool is currently under development, so don't bother looking for the non-existent download link on their site. ]

Posted in Software | 3 Comments »
2

Hand-crank Vibrator

6 Mar 2006

Random drop of weirdness from the sea of weird we call the intarweb. This hand-cranked vibrator supposedly dates back to the late 1880’s to early 1900’s. Sayeth the Vibrator Museum: "The action is a plunging motion of the center disk at the end combined with a rotating eccentric weight. There were also applicators that would screw into the center disk."

Wikipedia explains: "The electrically-powered vibrator was invented in the 1880s by doctors, who had been ostensibly treating women for "hysteria" for centuries by performing what we would now recognise as masturbating those women to orgasm. At the time, however, not only did doctors regard the "vulvular stimulation" required as having nothing to do with sex, they reportedly found it time-consuming and hard work. The vibrator got the job done more quickly and without such efforts, and as such was extremely popular with doctors."

The reason why I suddenly found the urge to look for vintage vibrator info (apart from the obvious) is that I was recently listening to an interesting talk given by Annalee Newitz at ETech 2005 called "How Sex Laws Incite Technological Change," wherein she mentioned that the first vibrator debuted sometime in 1882 and was steam-powered. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a link to it anywhere, but found this gallery of antiques instead. Fun for the whole family.

Posted in Randomness | 2 Comments »
0

Maritime: We the Vehicles

5 Mar 2006

Picked this band up off of the P2P yesterday. This is what I love about listening to scads of indie-rock: every once in awhile you’ll listen to something that just floors you from the first note, and you’ll often have no idea who these geniuses are.

To be fair though: Maritime isn’t made up of just any random geniuses. These are after all, the same guys who ripped it up in The Promise Ring and Dismemberment Plan, many years ago. To say that their sound is like a mix of their two predecessors would be doing them a great disservice though, as Maritime has pretty much surpassed anything either Promise Ring or Dismemberment Plan (or both, combined) has ever produced.

Overall, Maritime’s sound is a little bit like Jimmy Eat World meets The Shout Out Louds meets Walking Concert, if that means anything to you. Check out the first track off their We the Vehicles album right here.

Posted in Music | No Comments »
0

The Joy of Blah-Blah-Blah

5 Mar 2006

Last Friday, I woke up at the usual 12 noon to find an instant-message from my friend Francis the law student (Warped on highfiber). It said something to the effect of: "so what time are you coming over?" as if I would have any idea what any of that meant.

Apparently, I had agreed to speak at their college a couple of weeks before, and I had completely forgotten that they had moved the talk to Friday the 3rd. I had about two hours to get ready for an hour-long talk with an audience that I knew nothing about, regarding a subject that I knew (arguably) too much about. Since I was basically operating on nothing but assumptions, I decided to forego all the usual preparations (i.e., visual aids, outlines, general talking points) and just wing it.

Which, incidentally, turned out to be the right thing to do. Only 7 people showed up for the class so in terms of headcount, it was just like a big meeting. The difference of course was that I usually don’t sit at a teacher’s desk when I’m making a client pitch, but I guess the parallel was close enough for my purposes.

We talked about everything from Philippine animation, to the rule of thirds, to why local music-videos suck, to corporate web design budgets, to how Google works, to the power of blogging. The fact that I have more irrelevant trivia at my fingertips than any number of speakers meant I had a stupid/funny/interesting anecdote on practically any subject we touched on. That said, there were moments when I caught myself beginning to ramble (how does that quote about loving the sound of your own voice go again?), which hopefully weren’t that many.

Before I knew it, over 90 minutes had passed, and my voice was starting to strain. I’m actually a bit surprised by how much I enjoyed it, to be honest. Of course, it helped a whole lot that everyone was participating and asking questions and stuff. (On the other hand, it might simply have been the attention-whore in me aching for release.) I don’t know if it’s the sort of thing I could ever manage to do on a more regular basis, but it certainly seems like a challenge worth pursuing.

Posted in Randomness | No Comments »